Prime Min­is­ter Naren­dra Modi spoke out for the first time on the lynch­ing of a Mus­lim man in UP and the can­cel­la­tion of Pak­istani singer Ghu­lam Ali’s con­certs in Ma­ha­rash­tra, but said his gov­ern­ment had no role in the in­ci­dents which he dubbed “un­for­tu­nate” and “un­de­sir­able”.

Modi also hit out at the op­po­si­tion for its “dis­in­for­ma­tion cam­paign” that tar­geted his “deaf­en­ing si­lence” on the mob killing of 55-year-old Muham­mad Ikhlaq in Dadri’s Bisada vil­lage over cow-slaugh­ter ru­mours, an at­tack that trans­fixed the na­tion and raised sec­tar­ian con­cerns.

“The Dadri in­ci­dent or op­po­si­tion to [the] Pak­istani singer is un­de­sir­able and un­for­tu­nate. But what is the cen­tral gov­ern­ment’s Prime Min­is­ter Naren­dra Modi be­ing pre­sented a por­trait of Ne­taji Bose by his fam­ily mem­bers in New Delhi on Wed­nes­day. re­la­tion with these in­ci­dents,” such in­ci­dents. By high­light­ing he told the Ben­gali news­pa­per such in­ci­dents, op­po­si­tion par­ties Anand­abazar Pa­trika in an in­ter­view are mak­ing ac­cu­sa­tions of that came out on Wed­nes­day. com­mu­nal­ism against the BJP “[The] BJP al­ways op­posed pseudo-sec­u­lar­ism. but aren’t they ac­tu­ally re­sort­ing Now again this to pol­i­tics of po­lar­i­sa­tion de­bate is tak­ing place in the face through such tac­tics.” of un­for­tu­nate so­cial malaise... The BJP has never sup­ported

Af­ter a week-long public spat, the saf­fron al­lies on Wed­nes­day took steps to tone down hos­til­i­ties. Shiv Sena min­is­ters par­tic­i­pated in the state cab­i­net meet­ing, af­ter which chief min­is­ter Deven­dra Fad­navis gave a pa­tient hear­ing to all their com­plaints.

It was busi­ness as usual at the state sec­re­tar­iat: Sena min­is­ters marked their at­ten­dance in the state cab­i­net and no sparks flew; the Sena took the con­cil­ia­tory route and met Fad­navis later to com­plain about the snub their party chief Ud­dhav Thack­eray got last week, when he was in­vited, only at the last minute, for the Indu Mill func­tion where PM Naren­dra Modi was present.

The step down by both al­lies, in­ter­est­ingly, co­in­cided with NCP chief Sharad Pawar queer­ing the pitch for the BJP by say­ing his party will no longer sup­port the Fad­navis gov­ern­ment, if the Sena walked out. BJP lead­ers have so far been re­ly­ing on the NCP for out­side sup­port, in the worst case sce­nario of Sena walk­ing out of the gov­ern­ment.

A sep­a­rate cell to han­dle com­plaints about pot­holes in the city will soon be set up, the BMC told the Bom­bay high court on Wed­nes­day.

Se­nior ad­vo­cate Anil Sakhare, who rep­re­sented the BMC, told a di­vi­sion bench of jus­tice Ab­hay Oka and jus­tice VL Ach­liya that the civic body has re­ceived 5,900 online com­plaints and 47 com­plaints by tele­phone about pot­holes and al­most all com­plaints have been ad­dressed. He said con­sid­er­ing the large num­ber of com­plaints, the BMC has de­cided to set up a sep­a­rate cell to han­dle them and mon­i­tor the re­me­dial mech­a­nism.

The court was hear­ing a suo-motu PIL based on a note for­warded by a judge of the court, jus­tice Gau­tam Pa­tel, to the chief jus­tice last year high­light­ing the pa­thetic con­di­tion of roads in and around Mum­bai. In his let­ter, the judge had also high­lighted that the pot­holes and ditches on roads not only cause hard­ship and in­con­ve­nience to the peo­ple at large but they also re­sult in ca­su­al­ties, es­pe­cially of those who ride two-wheel­ers.

Act­ing on the PIL, the court had on May 20, held that the right to have roads in proper con­di­tions was a fun­da­men­tal right and the poor con­di­tion of roads, the ex­is­tence of pot­holes, fail­ure to level the roads prop­erly, and the lack of proper ameni­ties for pedes­tri­ans were the ma­jor fac­tors that cause a large num­ber of road ac­ci­dents, re­sult­ing in loss of life or se­ri­ous in­juries.